


Master of Foolhardy Plans

by Pippin



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, queen's thief au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-23 13:42:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16160075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pippin/pseuds/Pippin
Summary: One of the best Dark Matters has to offer, Agent Sasha Wire, believes she knows the site of an ancient treasure. To attain it for her organization, she needs a skillful thief, and she selects Peter from prison. Agent Wire is interested only in the thief's abilities.   What Peter is interested in is anyone's guess.





	Master of Foolhardy Plans

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the Penumbra Mini Bang server.

This sort of thing wasn’t normal for Peter Nureyev.  He didn’t get caught, not ever—well, when he did he immediately made a daring escape.  He didn’t sit in prison for _months_ , rotting away while he waited for someone else to get him out.

Or, well, he thought it was months.  It wasn’t like there was a window in his cell, like he ever got to go outside.  His only marking of the passage of time was the meals brought him every so often, and sure, Peter was pretty sure his internal clock had gone haywire, but he was also pretty sure that meals weren’t delivered at anything resembling regular intervals.

Peter felt more disgusting than he even wanted to think about.  Normally he was put together and elegant, but it wasn’t like he was given a chance for a bath, or even a change of clothes.  His entire body was covered in a thin layer of grime, one that he was sure smelled as awful as it felt.  He longed for the day when he was free and clean, able to step beyond the narrow confines of his cell, able to breathe free air and again be himself.  That day, though, was slow in coming.  He’d had a trial, of course, although he hadn’t heard his sentence himself.  He just knew that he was confined to his cell for the foreseeable future, however long that happened to be.

Peter spent the long days dreaming of sunshine as the cold set into his bones, already ruined by interplanetary travel and only made worse by the onslaught of dampness from the stone construction of the prison.  Sometimes he would move against the bars of his cell, press himself against them—if he craned his neck just enough he could see into the courtyard where rays of sunlight angled themselves across the stone floor.  It was near impossible to see, but Peter Nureyev was nothing if not persistent, and without that small glimpse of sunlight he might have fully lost his mind.

Normally footsteps would have caught Peter’s attention, but he had been lying upside down on his bed, legs up on the wall as he stretched out his aching back.  His entire focus was on the cracks and release of his spine, not the approaching bodies. 

In fact, he didn’t notice them at all until a flashlight shone into his cell, catching Peter fully in the eyes.

He wanted to look lithe and graceful and perhaps feral as he twisted himself around to sit up, but instead he was surprised, half-blind, and tumbled straight off the bed, landing painfully on the hard floor.

“This is the right one?”  The woman’s voice was hard as flint, with just a hint of surprise in it.  Peter couldn’t blame her for that, given the demonstration of exceeding grace he had just put on, but at the same time he was just slightly offended.  Whatever it was this woman wanted, damn right Peter Nureyev was the right man for the job.

A guard hauled Peter out of the cell with no care for his aching bones, dropping him at the feet of a scowling woman dressed all in black.  Peter scrambled to his feet before the guard could yank him up, trying to avoid any more pain.  That apparently wasn’t going to be allowed to happen, though, as the guard roughly pulled his arms behind his back to cuff them together.

Peter swore at him, to no avail.

As he did so, the woman looked him up and down, disdain in her cold eyes.  Her nose wrinkled slightly as she stepped closer, and Peter was fully aware that he couldn’t possibly smell nice, but he didn’t need the reminder from someone like this.

“What is your name?” she demanded.

“Perseus.”  It was the name he had been arrested and tried under, the one that would be on his official records.  A woman this important looking, there was no way she didn’t already know that, but it gave her the appearance of power.

“Bring him along.”

“I can walk!” Peter protested as the guard yanked his shoulder, but it did no good.

Peter was steered into a hallway off the main block of cells, one clearly used for administrative work, given how clean and bright it was.  The light felt like a physical attack, like Peter’s own knives going through his eyes, and Peter stopped abruptly, eyes squeezed shut to try and combat the pain.

He was only given a moment before being pulled forward again, up to the door of an office and in, then pushed into a chair across a desk from the same woman as earlier.

“I am Agent Wire, with the Dark Matters organization.  It’s a pity that I need to be here, in _this_ city, but it brought me to you, and gave me the chance to assemble a traveling party.  Not the best party, unfortunately, but a party nonetheless.  And you will be the most useful tool of my arsenal.  Not difficult, given what I have to work with, but never mind that.”

“What do you need me for?”

A fleeting look of disappointment crossed Agent Wire’s face before she schooled her features back into stony nonchalance.  “It is too bad for you that intelligence does not always attend gifts such as yours, and fortunate for me that it is not your intelligence I am interested in, but your skill.  If you are as good as you say you are.”

Peter frowned but ignored the insult.  He had figured what Agent Wire wanted him for—the very boast, and subsequent dare, that had gotten him arrested in the first place.  “I can steal anything.”

Agent Wire leaned back in her chair.  “Except yourself out of prison.”

Peter waved an airy hand.  “I was getting there.  Good plans take time, Agent Wire.  You of all people should know that.”

Agent Wire narrowed her eyes but didn’t rise to the bait.  “Can you steal me the item I’m after?”

“I don’t even know what I’m to be stealing!” Peter protested.

Agent Wire dismissed the question.  “You can find out the details later.  What I need to know now is that you’re capable.”

“I’m capable,” Peter promised.  “But I have to know what I’m stealing.”  His normal employers weren’t this vague with their instructions, although he supposed it did sort of come with the Dark Matters territory.

“You’ll be told,” Agent Wire snapped.

“What if I can’t steal it?”

“I thought that you could steal anything.”

“Except myself out of prison,” Peter said with a sly grin.

“Don’t try to be smart.  You don’t pretend well.”

Peter shook his head.  “When do we begin?”

“I’ll come for you.”  Agent Wire stood, gesturing to the guard in the hallway.  “Take him back to his cell.”

* * *

Later that night, as Peter lay curled on his bed, he allowed a slow smile to spread across his face.  He was getting out.

**Author's Note:**

> I just really love Queen's Thief and I was discussing this with someone in the server and ended up writing it. This is going to more or less follow along the plot of The Thief. Enjoy!


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